Kaz wrote:We don't live in 1910 though, Suff, we live in the 21st century. Unfortunately many hard-won rights are being eroded, standards of living dropping - the rich getting rich whilst the rest suffer. Something is seriously wrong, and needs to change.
No Kaz we don't live in 1910 and life is a hell of a lot easier for it. In 1910 89% of UK wealth was in the hands of 10% of the people in the country. Today the top 10% have 43% of the wealth. This is a truly massive redistribution of wealth. Yet all we ever hear is "the rich are getting richer". By what measure?
In 1910 there was no pension and certainly no DSS. There was no NHS and people had to pay for their health.
These rights have been hard won and have become their own millstone around the neck of the country. However we had a successful Labour government in my lifetime (The one before was far from successful), yet they didn't recover the eroded rights from the Thatcher years.
If you can't trust Labour to keep hard won rights, then who can you trust? The Tories never promised to "protect the rights of the workers". In fact they have been pretty clear that the legal bonfire of the "rights" created in the 50's and 60's is far from over and their view is that business will be better for it. The Tory view is more business, more jobs, more jobs, more wealth for the people. Although they will have to work for it.
When the people have decided that the Tories have gone too far, then they will vote for Labour to come back and re-balance it. My take is 2024 which is why I didn't care who took over the Tories so long as that person was not the very best candidate.
The rise of the right, in the UK, is entirely different from the rise of the right in Europe. There they are stultified and smothered with PR, find it almost impossible to get change and just get the same faceless androgynous politicians all regurgitating the same "centre" political crap and the relentless march of "political progress" goes on. They don't want it. So they do what they have to and the far right, to them, is far less dangerous than the far left. Those they know all too well.
The problems of the Right in the UK have it's roots in the devolution of parliaments to give the other countries of the UK more self determination. That gives them a platform to campaign against "more UK" and that almost always drives at the Tories. This gives the Tories a legitimate "threat" To say "see if you don't vote for us you'll get them wagging Labour and the Lib Dems".
If you want to look at the architects of that mess, look no further than Blair and Brown.